2025 Physics Newsletter

It has been about a year since our last newsletter, and it has been an eventful year with new hires and growth in our undergraduate and graduate student enrollment. Recent faculty recruitments include Michel Devoret, coming from Yale; Caitlin Casey and Brendan Bowler, coming from UT Austin; and Prateek Agrawal, coming from Oxford. We continue to have a large number of undergraduates in the program, with UCSB recently graduating more physics majors than any other US institution (179 in 2023 and 123 in 2024). We welcomed 35 excellent grad students last year, and the number of applications to our grad program continues to rise (1293 this year vs 1140 last year).

Our updated undergraduate curriculum continues to expand, with the most recent new courses including an optics lab for undergraduates and machine shop training for both graduate and undergraduate students. We also have several special topics courses being taught this year, and a growing number of undergraduate students involved in independent research projects. Developing and maintaining opportunities for our undergraduates to participate in the department’s research remains an important goal. Research experience and other project-based learning are great ways for our students to broaden their technical and critical thinking skills, build confidence in real-world problem solving, and develop pragmatism, which are all a foundation for broad career opportunities. We are thrilled to see a growing number of students successfully engaging in such projects, which is made possible by generous support from donors, mentoring by both faculty and graduate students, and the students' vigorous curiosity!

This past year, we have had several alumni visit campus for workshops, seminars, or colloquia. We take the opportunity to arrange informal lunch chats where students can ask our alumni guests questions about their recent work and career paths; I’ve been pleased to see the students’ enthusiasm to hear about the breadth of paths taken by our alumni. I’ve also had the opportunity during recent travels to connect with several alumni and friends of the department, including chats over coffee, lunch, or dinner, as well as a wonderful alumni reception in NY city in December. We are planning to have a department event during April’s All-Gaucho Reunion, including Broida lab tours; it would be great to see many of you then. 

I hope you enjoy reading the updates from the department in this newsletter, and we would be delighted to hear updates from you. If you’d like to subscribe to more frequent news about the department, you can do so at this link.